


three thousand and eighty seven

by flybbfly



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Fluff, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 21:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9679856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly
Summary: Long distance is hard. So is picking out a Valentine's Day present for your boyfriend who lives on the opposite coast and has even less interest in Valentine's Day than he does in everything else.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [requiemofkings](http://requiemofkings.tumblr.com) for the [AFTG Valentine's Exchange](http://aftgexchange.tumblr.com). You asked for post-Palmetto life and floral wristbands, and I tried to deliver a little bit of that! I really hope you like it (and if you do, I'm sort of playing with the idea of a companion fic from Andrew's pov ... so yeah let me know lol)

The Massachusetts Minutemen's stadium—located, because Boston has no understanding of either irony or subtlety, yards away from the site of the actual Battle of Bunker Hill—is packed, a full house, all here to see their psychotic goalkeeper take on his college teammate and professional rival in the first round of the NEL playoffs.

But then—it is _Boston_. They'd probably be here anyway. Or so Neil tells himself, gearing up with everything except his helmet. If they were here to see him fight Andrew, they've got another thing coming.

Their teams haven't played each other since the early weeks of the regular season, when Neil was still finding his feet with Portland and struggling with the width in sheer miles of the United States. Every time he looked at that number—3,087 miles between Portland and Boston—he felt his lunch coming back up his throat. Never mind that only half their games were at home in a season, that even now, in February, he's barely gotten a glimpse of the city he's supposed to be referring to as “home” now. 

He's adjusted since, of course. It's not that different from when Neil was in Palmetto and Andrew had just moved to Boston, the only team desperate enough for a goalkeeper to take a chance on Palmetto State's resident nutjob—or, to hear them say it, the only team with good enough scouts to know he's the best possible choice for a team with a scattered defense and powerful offense. Andrew's good on the counter, and he fit right in. Starting for Boston within his first month. It's an achievement.

Neil, meanwhile, is fighting for his own place on the starting line. Portland's other strikers are all older, and they're a team that uses brute force to score goals, which meant everyone was shocked to hear they'd drafted Palmetto's tiny starting striker last summer. Now, though, he's proved that he's more than willing to get into fights with people much larger than him, and Portland's play style has almost started to shift, so that they rely more on skill than power. At least, that's what he tells himself.

He'd be more worried if he planned to stay in Portland. Or maybe he'd just care more. Instead, he's trying to net as many goals as possible and praying for a trade back to the east coast as soon as possible. His options, other than Portland at the end of last year: San Diego (a definite no), Seattle (an even bigger no), Kansas City (closer to a yes, but Andrew dismissed it with an offhand mention of complicated flights between there and Boston). Plus Matt's in Portland, his giant spiky-haired jock sticking out in the flood of bearded white hipster, and Neil doesn't know a soul in Kansas City.

In the months since that first meeting on the court—when Andrew shut out the Portland Cyclists without breaking a sweat and Neil only managed to score with their sub goalkeeper in the net—their quote-unquote rivalry has been hilariously built up by the media. Nicky takes too much joy in sending the old Foxes group chat articles about it from awful sports gossip sites.

So maybe there's something in the claims that the fans are there to see another Andrew Minyard shutout. Neil doesn't care. He's there to play until he can't hold his racquet anymore, and then he'll ditch his teammates to see Andrew for all of thirty minutes before they need to fly back to Portland. Matt's already promised to cover for him. 

Neil perches on the bench for the first ten minutes, watching as his team tries and mostly fails to get goals past Andrew. The fractures that exist in Boston's defense are obvious—rather than operating as a proper line, one of the players keeps hanging back, constantly playing Portland strikers onside and making Andrew's job more difficult. For his part, Andrew seems to be calling them into formation, but the response is lukewarm at best. Andrew's saving their asses, but they need an all new backline—or at least someone to kick all of them into gear.

Their offense is another story. They laser balls toward the opposing goal. Portland's own goalkeeper is good, tall, strong, has an excellent eye and can read strikers like a children's book, and she manages to keep out most of Boston's goals, too. So the Minutemen are good when they get it together and play like a team—they just tend not to do that. It's familiar enough that Neil almost smiles watching it.

It's a close game when Neil steps onto the court to replace Owens, clacking sticks with Matt as he passes. Neil forces himself not to make eye contact with Andrew—if he does, he'll lose focus, and he's not interested in letting Andrew win just because of their _this_. 

Instead, he takes the ball when it's passed to him, and, because he knows— _knows_ —Andrew will block him, passes it to Warren. Warren goes for goal, and—misses. Neil grabs the ball on the deflection, takes three of his ten steps, and shoots. Blocked. Not even difficult for Andrew. Neil lets out a breathless laugh despite himself.

He's on until halftime and manages to score a grand total of zero times. Andrew's too good, knows him too well, enjoys blocking Neil too much. The Minutemen will sub goalies at the half, though, and Neil will get a couple of goals in before Andrew comes back on and Neil gets subbed off. 

Neil pulls his helmet off, turns to make his way off the court, but someone loops their fingers through the netting on Neil's racquet.

Neil turns automatically, wondering if Andrew's going to give the fans what they want and pick a fight. Instead, Andrew raises an eyebrow at Neil from behind his helmet.

“Predictable as ever, Josten.”

Neil grins. “Am I?”

“That pass to Warren was beneath you.”

“Surprised you, though. She would've scored if she hadn't missed.”

“Big if,” Andrew says. 

“I have thirty minutes during the press conference after the game,” Neil says. “Does your locker room have changing stalls?”

“Of course.” Andrew's expression doesn't shift—what Neil can see of it anyway—but there's a slightly lilt in his voice that suggests it might have. “Your teammates are waiting for you.”

He hasn't let go of Neil's racquet. Neil quirks an eyebrow at him, waiting, but Andrew just glares at him for a moment longer before taking his fingers back and leaving out of the same door as the rest of the Minutemen.

“What was that about?” Warren says when Neil gets back to the away locker room. “You two really hate each other? That's not just media bullshit?”

“Oh, they definitely hate each other,” Matt says, throwing an arm around Neil's shoulders and grinning. “You should have seen them in college. They could barely keep their hands off each other.”

“Doesn't surprise me,” Warren says. “You're both fucking creepy.” But she's smiling when she says it—the Cyclists are only down by one goal, and Andrew won't be on again until the end of the second half, if at all. They're going to win if she has anything to say about it.

*

The redeye back to Portland drags. Neil's teammates are all dozing in their seats, but Neil's never been very good at sleeping on flights. The in-flight entertainment is shit, too, bad buddy comedies on broken headphones and radio stations that barely work.

He closes his eyes. If he focuses, he can see Andrew in front of him, can almost feel Andrew trailing kisses down his front in the deserted Minutemen locker room, Andrew's fingers around his throat tapping to the beat of Neil's pulse, a nervous habit he has yet to let go of. 

It's a six hour flight. If he sleeps, it's irregular and light, and he keeps skipping out of it, catching glimpses of mediocre movies on the back of the chair in front of him.

*

Neil calls Andrew when he and Matt get to their apartment even though it's five-thirty in the morning on the east coast. He forces himself not to say what they're both thinking—that the distance is too long—and instead just tells Andrew, “We just got back. Going to bed now.”

“Check Twitter,” Andrew says, voice dragging at the edges, heavy with sleep. 

“Why, did some journalist say we hate each other?”

Andrew doesn't answer, but Neil can hear him there, breath steady and slow on the other end of the line. 

Twitter is, as usual, a mess—the picture making the rounds this time is one of Neil giving Andrew what Neil reads as an easy smile but what everyone else has read as a challenge. Half his notifications are people asking him why he hates Andrew—and the other half are people telling him he'll never be good enough to score on him. Neil rolls his eyes.

“They're right,” he says. “I'm never going to be good enough to score on you.”

“Stop trying to get pity goals,” Andrew says, because he knows Neil well enough to not take this seriously. “Never going to work.”

“I guess we'll see in the finals,” Neil says. 

“Your goalie would have to learn how to save first.”

“Sorry, did I miss something? Didn't we win?”

“By one goal,” Andrew says. “We need smarter strikers. They haven't learned to trust me yet.”

Neil's breath catches in his throat at the immediate violent _want_ in the pit of his stomach. His voice sounds too loud when he says, “I'll let you get back to sleep.”

They both know Andrew would've hung up himself if he'd wanted to, but Andrew doesn't comment, only says, “Goodnight.”

“Night,” Neil murmurs.

*

Three thousand and eighty seven miles is over sixteen million feet, close to two hundred million inches. What's that they say about inches, the rule of thumb where you can measure one using the distance between the tip of your finger and that first joint? Neil holds his hand in front of his face and imagines two hundred million of those fingertips all lined up, stretching from Portland through the Rockies, across the Great Plains, over Lake Michigan and up through the Rust Belt to Boston.

He moved to Portland in June. It's February. He is not coping well.

He thought he was over all of this, but playing against Andrew feels like it's reset him, so that he's back to being twenty-two in Palmetto, alone for the first time since he arrived there his freshman year. He doesn't say anything—obviously—but he can tell he's giving off a weird energy, because Matt keeps giving him odd looks on their drive to practice that morning.

“Two of you doing anything special for Valentine's Day?” Matt says, one easy hand on the steering wheel and the other wrapped around his thermos of coffee.

Neil tries to picture either Andrew or himself caring about candy hearts and little baby Cupids and fails.

“We're not really the Valentine's Day type,” Neil says. 

“Yeah, no shit,” Matt says. “But since you're long distance now, like, with me and Dan, I feel like it's one of the things that makes us feel like we're still a couple? Even though we're like a thousand miles apart.”

Dan's in DC, which means they're probably closer to the three thousand mile marker than that. Neil doesn't bother to correct him.

“What are you two doing?”

“Just a Skype date,” Matt says. “Pink wine, presents in the mail, flowers to her job, the evening as close as we can get without actually being, you know, close.”

“That's sweet,” Neil says.

“Wow, you sound enthusiastic.”

“No, it just all sounds … very you,” Neil says. “Very perfect couple.”

“You guys having relationship problems?”

“No, but we're never going to be—like that,” Neil says. For one, he doesn't care about flowers. For another, the fourteenth of February feels arbitrary—they can video chat any day, and neither of them drinks wine. 

“Yeah, you've always been unbe _liev_ ably intense.”

That drags a dry laugh out of Neil. Matt glances across at him, smile faintly surprised. 

“What?” Neil says. 

“Nothing,” Matt says, reaching over to flick Neil's cheek. “You two are just cute, is all.”

Cute. That makes Neil laugh, too.

*

They're _not_ the Valentine's Day type, but Neil finds himself hanging back at the sporting goods store later that evening anyway, looking at all the weird things in their seasonal aisle. He chooses something and finds a tailor who can customize it without asking too many questions. He doesn't bother to wait for it to actually be two days before Valentine's to send the gift, just packages it up and drops it off at the post office.

He doesn't hear from Andrew aside from their typical conversations—they used to be nightly, but with the timezone differences and both of their busy schedules they've turned into a couple times a week and more on the weekends—and he doesn't push it. They're both busy people, and Andrew doesn't need to be prompted. If Andrew wants to say something, he will.

*

Neil is making himself scarce on Valentine's Day afternoon in all the ways he knows: he jogs for as long as he can without hurting himself considering he's also had a full day's practice. He showers at the team gym and sits in the locker room, drying off and checking his texts. He's always been shit at this part of being real, keeping up with communication with people other than Andrew, and his inbox is packed, mostly dumb jokes in the team groupchat and even worse jokes in the old Foxes groupchat.

There are old friends and teammates who've sent him texts, many of them well-versed in his texting habits, knowing they probably won't hear back from him, and yet there are scattered “miss u!”s anyway, and Neil knows that well, doesn't he, the sore ache of missing someone, but even if he wouldn't mind seeing Allison it's hard to think of it in those terms. He's not missing her, like you'd miss a limb or miss the goal. He just hasn't seen her in a while and would like to at some point in the not-so-distant future.

It's not the same with Andrew, of course, but wallowing in feelings like those is decidedly not a good idea. 

He checks the Foxes' groupchat next—nostalgia's sake—and scrolls through the recent flailing messages until he sees a screenshot of Andrew's Instagram. 

It's too small for him to read the caption, so Neil opens Instagram for the first time in months and navigates to Andrew's. 

The wristbands Neil bought him are still black—he is still Andrew—but they're embroidered with pink and red roses and their green stems, complete with thorns. The photo Andrew posted is just a shot of his torso wearing a Nike workout shirt, arms loosely crossed in front of it, with a caption and a series of hashtags that indicate it's a sponsored post for Valentine's Day featuring his new armbands and—the reason it blew up the Foxes groupchat— _@neiljosten_ stamped on the end. 

Neil smiles, double taps the picture to like it, and doesn't say anything in the groupchat. 

As if waiting for the cue, his phone rings.

“Did the knives fit?”

“Yes.”

“You left them in for the photoshoot?”

Andrew understands the subtext: “I have to be the breadwinner if you're going to be stuck paying the Moriyamas most of your paycheck for the rest of your life.” 

The rest of his life. Neil rubs at the corner of his mouth and doesn't bring up Andrew's acknowledgement that he'll be around that long.

“Let me in.” 

“What?”

“I'm outside the building,” Andrew says. “Can't get in.”

Neil's heart speeds up. He's _here_? In Portland?

“I'm not at my apartment,” Neil says. “I'm at the Portland practice court.

“I know where you are. Let me in.”

He all but sprints out of the locker room, up the foreboding cement stairs, through the glossy lobby to the locked front doors. He pushes the button to let Andrew in and waits as Andrew walks—steps as controlled as ever—across the threshold. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I thought if you were desperate enough to send me a gift for _Valentine's Day_ —”

“It wasn't for Valentine's Day,” Neil says. “It was just for February.”

Andrew keeps walking until his forehead bumps Neil's. He brings a hand to Neil's neck as soon as he's close enough, tapping along to the speed of Neil's pulse, which is going much more quickly than it should be given how relaxed his body has been for the past hour.

“Boston is cold,” Andrew says, other hand hooked in the front of Neil's shirt, and kisses him. He's pulling Neil closer with both hands, as if now that they've bridged the three thousand mile gap he doesn't want even an inch of space between them, and Neil goes willingly.

Andrew is all heat and bite, pressing so tightly into Neil that their noses mash together uncomfortably. In a lot of ways, it feels like a first ever kiss, except that even that first desperate kiss felt more controlled than this. This is all pressure, more an attempt to get as close as possible than anything else.

“I have a hotel,” Andrew says, only pulling far enough away to talk. Neil can feel the vibrations from his voice against his lips. 

“I have an apartment.”

“Which you are avoiding.” 

“Matt and Dan are doing a Valentine's Skype thing,” Neil says. There's an odd, giddy feeling rushing up inside of him, and he doesn't want to move even to get out of the building and into Andrew's car. The idea of separating from Andrew for even as long as it takes to drive to his hotel is cataclysmic. “I thought it'd be smart to keep away.” 

“Since when do you make smart decisions?” Andrew says.

“Since I met you.”

This time, Andrew only kisses him to shut him up, then wraps a hand around Neil's wrist and drags him to the lockers.

“Get your things,” he says. 

“How are you here?” Neil says, digging through his locker for a clean set of clothes to take with him. 

“Cough, cough,” Andrew says. “I'm sick.”

“You took a sick day and flew seven hours across the country to see me on Valentine's Day.”

“I took a sick day and flew seven hours across the country to see you in February,” Andrew says. 

“So the fact that it's the fourteenth is just a coincidence.”

“Yes.”

“Since when do you believe in coincidences?”

Andrew's face looks harsh in the fluorescent lighting of the locker room, but something about his expression is soft anyway. 

“Hurry up,” he says.

Neil hurries up.

*

(They hold hands in Andrew's rental. It's not typical, not for them, hand-holding, and if Neil weren't borderline falling apart in Portland he wouldn't have reached for Andrew's free hand, said “Yes or no?” a touch too quietly, and wound their fingers together. He can tell Andrew feels it too, the necessity of closeness, because he doesn't let go of Neil's hand until he needs to shift to park.)

*

The hotel is a nice one, Neil supposes, nicer than either of their tastes have called for during past joint vacations, even now that they have ample money. The bed is big, and the room comes stocked with a bottle of champagne and a heart-shaped box of chocolates. It's so cliché that it has to be deliberate on Andrew's part, an in-joke or else a genuine attempt at romance even though neither he nor Neil have ever cared much for romantic comedies' portrayals of love.

“What's next?” Neil says. “A bubble bath and Julia Roberts?”

“If you want,” Andrew says, digging open the box of chocolates and popping one into his mouth.

“Maybe not the Julia Roberts,” Neil says, reaching for Andrew again.

This time, Andrew tastes like chocolate.

*

Morning comes, and with it the disheartening reality that Andrew has to go back to the east coast and that they're stuck apart, break-less until playoffs are over in late April.

Neil lies in bed next to him, facing the ceiling, and says, “What if we meet halfway?”

Andrew's fingers are locked in Neil's hair where it's grown out a touch too much at the nape of his neck. 

“What's halfway between Portland and Boston?” 

“Grand Island, Nebraska,” Neil says.

“You've already checked.”

“Yeah.”

“What's in Grand Island, Nebraska?”

“Corn,” Neil says.

Andrew does something on his phone with the other hand.

“Chicago,” he says.

“What?”

“There are no nonstop flights between Portland and Grand Island. You'd end up spending six hours in the air. Chicago's three or four hours for both of us.”

Neil thinks of Andrew's aversion to heights. “I assumed we'd drive,” he says.

“If we drove we'd waste twenty-three hours each,” Andrew says. 

“You hate flying.”

“I hate you,” Andrew corrects, but there's nothing in it. He tugs at Neil's hair until Neil turns to look at him. “A four hour flight every other weekend will not kill me.”

Every other weekend. Neil's breath hitches even as Andrew draws him closer with the hand at the back of his head.

“Besides,” Andrew says, “Portland isn't permanent.” 

Neil kisses him, lazy, slow—they have the entire morning for this, because Neil's coach doesn't know Neil's in a relationship and he, too, has paid sick days (“Come in and have Benji take a look at you.” “It's okay,” Neil said. “Just a stomach bug. Really, I couldn't even drive over. Ask Matt”)—and Andrew reciprocates, equally slowly. 

“Should we get coffee?” Neil says. 

He doesn't really want to leave the hotel room, and by the looks of it, Andrew doesn't either, browsing the room service menu. They've never ordered room service before—usually the two of them are more interested in wandering when they're at a hotel together than they are in staying put indoors. But this time is different, because they're in Portland, because they only have a few hours, and Andrew calls down to order coffee and breakfast and then climbs back on top of Neil for more slow, lazy kisses.

Portland isn't permanent. There will be Chicago in two weeks, then two weeks after that, and so on.

And after that, Neil will get traded elsewhere. Anyone can see he's not the best fit at Portland, but he scores goals, lots of them, even as a sub, against everyone except Andrew, and he's young and wants to win trophies. Portland isn't permanent. Boston isn't, either, not unless Andrew wants it to be. 

Andrew kisses the side of his neck, and Neil stops thinking.

**Author's Note:**

> Me thinking up team names for this fic: “What is Boston famous for? Minutemen. What is Portland famous for? Hipsters riding bikes. Done.” (To be honest, I'm surprised there isn't a sports team called the Boston Minutemen. Our library cards have minutemen on them. The soccer team is called the New England Revolution. Boston is really goddamn extra.)
> 
> Shout out to the [AFTG exchange mods](http://aftgexchange.tumblr.com/) for facilitating yet another awesome exchange!
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr ([fandom](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com) | [main](http://osaudade.tumblr.com)). Please leave a comment if you enjoyed or spotted a typo!


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